1.10.12

No ice cream. AKA the sad tale of Movenpick and the Nestlé Boycott

At the weekend I went out for a meal. The meal was to celebrate 20  years of marriage. We of course took along our adorable Darling Daughter. For dessert we had ice cream, but not just any ice cream, Movenpick Ice cream, I had pistachio and DD had coconut, DH stole some of each :-)

It was so delicious that the following day I was determined to track down a local store to buy some (argh I typed store! SHOP - I'm online in the world of the USA WAY too much!) any way I asked the lovely Twitter who suggested a garden centre chain, so I went online to search, a search which led me to the Movenpick website and a sad discovery.

Movenpick is owned by Nestlé.

Nestle make all the yummy things. Cheerios, Mint Aero bars, but unlike the ice cream I can't recall the last time I ate them because I boycott Nestlé.

I know it's a middle class luxury. I've heard the arguments that one housewife refusing to buy a packet of cereal is unlikely to bring down one of the biggest and ruthless conglomerates in the world. But still I do it. I changed hair dye manufacturers and then stopped dying my hair altogether (learning to love the grey - DD recently commented "your hair sparkles" so maybe it's silver!) I stopped buying Cheerios, I no longer buy Body Shop products (did you all notice BTW when the labels subtly changed from 'Not tested on Animals' to 'Against Animal Testing' ? not the same, not the same at all) I don't drink instant coffee anyway but I do like coffee whitener, so I have to find other brands than Coffee Mate...

Why you ask? Why boycott? Well it's all been said by lots of people already. Here is an article  which covers everything and then some! (main reasons are killing babies indirectly through the aggressive advertising of formula to mothers who don't need it, have no access to clean water etc)

Is the boycott working? I don't think so.
Could it work? of course, it just needs enough people.
Will that day ever come? Who knows, but until them I'm a sad ice cream-less middle class woman.


International Nestlé-Free Week: October/November

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